MTN Nigeria is going after more than 20 banks in a bid to recover over N6 billion linked to unpaid interconnect fees owed by SleekChip Technologies Limited.
This comes after a Federal High Court ruling in Abuja ordered SleekChip to pay $1.97 million, in naira, plus interest, to the telecom company.
At the centre of the case is a network interconnect agreement signed by both parties in July 2019. MTN said SleekChip racked up the debt between January and October 2022 by using its network to route calls and messages, but failed to pay.
Per Nairametrics, several demand notices were sent, according to court records. SleekChip responded in May 2023, promising to settle the debt by July 20 of the same year. That payment never came.
“The defendant has since failed, refused, and neglected to liquidate its indebtedness to the applicant without justification. The defendant has never disputed the debt but has admitted its indebtedness to the applicant,” MTN said in court.
MTN added that SleekChip missed the 60-day window to challenge the charges, as outlined in their agreement. The court found that SleekChip didn’t file any defence.
Judge Peter Lifu, satisfied with MTN’s evidence, ordered the company to pay the full amount, plus interest, backdated to January 2022.
Now, MTN wants to enforce that ruling by freezing SleekChip’s funds in multiple banks. The amount sought in the garnishee proceedings is N3.28 billion, the naira equivalent of the court-ordered payment.
The figure includes interest calculated using the Central Bank’s exchange rate of N1,665.84 to $1 as at 7 November 2024.
On 16 May 2025, when the case returned to court, MTN’s lawyers said they had received responses from almost all the banks, showing whether SleekChip held accounts with them.
MTN asked the court to release over 10 of those banks from the case, since the company had no funds with them. The judge approved that request.
Some banks complied with the court’s instructions but disagreed with MTN’s push to run further searches on SleekChip’s accounts using its Bank Verification Number (BVN). The banks argued that the court never gave permission for such a move. The case has now been adjourned until 26 June 2025.
This is not MTN’s first clash over unpaid interconnect fees. In recent years, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) approved MTN’s disconnection of several service providers, including SleekChip and Exchange Telecommunications Limited.
MTN was also briefly allowed to partially disconnect Globacom in early 2024, but both companies later reached a settlement.
Not just for MTN, but across the telecom sector, interconnect debts are a serious challenge faced by telcos.
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